Ericsson today announced that Australia’s leading telecommunications provider Telstra is the first to use the LTE-Advanced (LTE-A) Carrier Aggregation technology on 1800 MHz and 900 MHz spectrum bands on a commercial network.

This took place on July 31, when Telstra transferred data across its live network on a number of sites in Queensland (Australia) carrying commercial traffic.

LTE Carrier Aggregation is the next step in the evolution of high-speed mobile broadband services, enabling operators to make the most of their existing spectrum assets by combining multiple spectrum bands to enable higher mobile broadband download speeds.

Mike Wright, executive director Networks, Telstra said, “Telstra’s LTE subscriber numbers are growing dramatically, with nearly 3 million subscribers currently using the LTE network, up from 2.1 million six months ago. The capacity, higher data speeds and efficiencies provided by LTE-A will help manage growth in data traffic as more customers choose our network. This will allow us to continue providing additional capacity and high-quality service, and we look forward to working with Ericsson to make this happen.”

“When we get access to 700 MHz spectrum in 2015 we also intend to deploy the next-generation of LTE-A by combining larger blocks of spectrum in the 700 MHz and 1800 MHz bands to deliver blistering peak speeds in the theoretical range of 300 Mbps,” added Wright.

Hakan Eriksson, head of Ericsson Australia, New Zealand and Fiji said, “Across the region and the globe, many operators have spectrum available in the 1800MHz and 900MHz bands as they migrate subscribers from 2G to 3G or 4G. Many operators will be watching the Australian deployment of LTE-Advanced on these spectrum bands.”

Ericsson is supporting the deployment of LTE-A Carrier Aggregation on other spectrum bands in other countries such as South Korea. On July 18, for instance, Ericsson supported LG U+ in South Korea to commercially launch LTE-Advanced using both 2100 MHz and 850 MHz bands.